The Runaway Jury
By JOHN GRISHAM

Doubleday

The face of Nicholas Easter was slightly hidden by a display
rack filled with slim cordless phones, and he was looking not
directly at the hidden camera but somewhere off to the left,
perhaps at a customer, or perhaps at a counter where a group of
kids hovered over the latest electronic games from Asia. Though
taken from a distance of forty yards by a man dodging rather
heavy mall foot traffic, the photo was clear and revealed a nice
face, clean-shaven with strong features and boyish good looks.
Easter was twenty-seven, they knew that for a fact. No
eyeglasses. No nose ring or weird haircut. Nothing to indicate he
was one of the usual computer nerds who worked in the store at
five bucks an hour. His questionnaire said he'd been there for four
months, said also that he was a part-time student, though no
record of enrollment had been found at any college within three
hundred miles. He was lying about this, they were certain.

He had to be lying. Their intelligence was too good. If the kid
was a student, they'd know where, for how long, what field of
study, how good were the grades, or how bad. They'd know. He
was a clerk in a Computer Hut in a mall. Nothing more or less.
Maybe he planned to enroll somewhere. Maybe he'd dropped out
but still liked the notion of referring to himself as a part-time
student. Maybe it made him feel better, gave him a sense of
purpose, sounded good.

But he was not, at this moment nor at any time in the recent
past, a student of any sort. So, could he be trusted? This had been
thrashed about the room twice already, each time they came to
Easter's name on the master list and his face hit the screen. It
was a harmless lie, they'd almost decided.

He didn't smoke. The store had a strict nonsmoking rule, but
he'd been seen (not photographed) eating a taco in the Food
Garden with a co-worker who smoked two cigarettes with her
lemonade. Easter didn't seem to mind the smoke. At least he
wasn't an antismoking zealot.

The face in the photo was lean and tanned and smiling slightly
with lips closed. The white shirt under the red store jacket had a
buttonless collar and a tasteful striped tie. He appeared neat, in
shape, and the man who took the photo actually spoke with
Nicholas as he pretended to shop for an obsolete gadget; said he
was articulate, helpful, knowledgeable, a nice young man. His
name badge labeled Easter as a Co-Manager, but two others with
the same title were spotted in the store at the same time.

The day after the photo was taken, an attractive young female
in jeans entered the store, and while browsing near the software
actually lit up a cigarette. Nicholas Easter just happened to be the
nearest clerk, or Co-Manager, or whatever he was, and he
politely approached the woman and asked her to stop smoking.
She pretended to be frustrated by this, even insulted, and tried to
provoke him. He maintained his tactful manner, explained to her
that the store had a strict no-smoking policy. She was welcome to
smoke elsewhere. "Does smoking bother you?" she had asked,
taking a puff. "Not really," he had answered. "But it bothers the
man who owns this store." He then asked her once again to stop.
She really wanted to purchase a new digital radio, she explained,
so would it be possible for him to fetch an ashtray. Nicholas pulled
an empty soft drink can from under the counter, and actually took
the cigarette from her and extinguished it. They talked about
radios for twenty minutes as she struggled with the selection. She
flirted shamelessly, and he warmed to the occasion. After paying
for the radio, she left him her phone number. He promised to call.

The episode lasted twenty-four minutes and was captured by a
small recorder hidden in her purse. The tape had been played both
times while his face had been projected on the wall and studied by
the lawyers and their experts. Her written report of the incident
was in the file, six typed pages of her observations on everything
from his shoes (old Nikes) to his breath (cinnamon gum) to his
vocabulary (college level) to the way he handled the cigarette. In
her opinion, and she was experienced in such matters, he had
never smoked.

They listened to his pleasant tone and his professional sales
pitch and his charming chatter, and they liked him. He was bright
and he didn't hate tobacco. He didn't fit as their model juror, but
he was certainly one to watch. The problem with Easter, potential
juror number fifty-six, was that they knew so little about him.
Evidently, he had landed on the Gulf Coast less than a year ago,
and they had no idea where he came from. His past was a
complete mystery. He rented a one-bedroom eight blocks from
the Biloxi courthouse--they had photos of the apartment
building--and at first worked as a waiter in a casino on the
beach. He rose quickly to the rank of blackjack dealer, but quit
after two months.

Shortly after Mississippi legalized gambling, a dozen casinos
along the Coast sprang forth overnight, and a new wave of
prosperity hit hard. Job seekers came from all directions, and so it
was safe to assume Nicholas Easter arrived in Biloxi for the same
reason as ten thousand others. The only odd thing about his move
was that he had registered to vote so quickly.

He drove a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle, and a photo of it was
flashed on the wall, taking the place of his face. Big deal. He was
twenty-seven, single, an alleged part-time student--the perfect
type to drive such a car. No bumper stickers. Nothing to indicate
political affiliation or social conscience or favorite team. No
college parking sticker. Not even a faded dealer decal. The car
meant nothing, as far as they were concerned. Nothing but
near-poverty.

The man operating the projector and doing most of the talking
was Carl Nussman, a lawyer from Chicago who no longer
practiced law but instead ran his own jury consulting firm. For a
small fortune, Carl Nussman and his firm could pick you the right
jury. They gathered the data, took the photos, recorded the
voices, sent the blondes in tight jeans into the right situations. Carl
and his associates flirted around the edges of laws and ethics, but
it was impossible to catch them. After all, there's nothing illegal or
unethical about photographing prospective jurors. They had
conducted exhaustive telephone surveys in Harrison County six
months ago, then again two months ago, then a month later to
gauge community sentiment about tobacco issues and formulate
models of the perfect jurors. They left no photo untaken, no dirt
ungathered. They had a file on every prospective juror.

Carl pushed his button and the VW was replaced with a
meaningless shot of an apartment building with peeling paint;
home, somewhere in there, of Nicholas Easter. Then a flick, and
back to the face.

"And so we have only the three photos of number fifty-six,"
Carl said with a note of frustration as he turned and glared at the
photographer, one of his countless private snoops, who had
explained he just couldn't catch the kid without getting caught
himself. The photographer sat in a chair against the back wall,
facing the long table of lawyers and paralegals and jury experts.
The photographer was quite bored and ready to bolt. It was seven
o'clock on a Friday night. Number fifty-six was on the wall,
leaving a hundred and forty still to come. The weekend would be
awful. He needed a drink.

A half-dozen lawyers in rumpled shirts and rolled-up sleeves
scribbled never-ending notes, and glanced occasionally at the face
of Nicholas Easter up there behind Carl. Jury experts of almost
every variety--psychiatrist, sociologist, handwriting analyst, law
professor, and so on--shuffled papers and thumped the
inch-thick computer printouts. They weren't sure what to do with
Easter. He was a liar, and he was hiding his past, but still on
paper and on the wall he looked okay.

Maybe he wasn't lying. Maybe he was a student last year in
some low-rent junior college in eastern Arizona, and maybe they
were simply missing this.

Give the kid a break, the photographer thought, but he kept it to
himself. In this room of well-educated and well-paid suits, he was
the last one whose opinion would be appreciated. Wasn't his job to
say a word.

Carl cleared his throat while glancing once more at the
photographer, then said, "Number fifty-seven." The sweaty face
of a young mother flashed on the wall, and at least two people in
the room managed a chuckle. "Traci Wilkes," Carl said, as if
Traci was now an old friend. Papers moved slightly around the
table.

"Age thirty-three, married, mother of two, doctor's wife, two
country clubs, two health clubs, a whole list of social clubs." Carl
clicked off these items from memory while twirling his projector
button. Traci's red face was replaced by a shot of her jogging
along a sidewalk, splendidly awash in pink and black spandex and
spotless Reeboks with a white sun visor sitting just above the
latest in reflective sport sunglasses, her long hair in a cute perfect
ponytail. She was pushing a jogging carriage with a small baby in
it. Traci lived for sweat. She was tanned and fit, but not exactly as
thin as might be expected. She had a few bad habits. Another shot
of Traci in her black Mercedes wagon with kids and dogs looking
from every window. Another of Traci loading bags of groceries
into the same car, Traci with different sneakers and tight shorts
and the precise appearance of one who aspired to look forever
athletic. She'd been easy to follow because she was busy to the
point of being frazzled, and she never stopped long enough to look
around.

Carl ran through the photos of the Wilkeses' home, a massive
suburban trilevel with Doctor stamped all over it. He spent little
time with these, saving the best for last. Then there was Traci,
once again soaked with sweat, her designer bike nearby on the
grass, sitting under a tree in a park, far away from everyone,
half-hidden and--smoking a cigarette!

The same photographer grinned stupidly. It was his finest work,
this hundred-yard shot of the doctor's wife sneaking a cigarette.
He had had no idea she smoked, just happened to be nonchalantly
smoking himself near a footbridge when she dashed by. He
loitered about the park for half an hour until he saw her stop and
reach into the pouch on her bike.

The mood around the room lightened for a fleeting moment as
they looked at Traci by the tree. Then Carl said, "Safe to say that
we'll take number fifty-seven." He made a notation on a sheet of
paper, then took a sip of old coffee from a paper cup. Of course
he'd take Traci Wilkes! Who wouldn't want a doctor's wife on the
jury when the plaintiff's lawyers were asking for millions? Carl
wanted nothing but doctors' wives, but he wouldn't get them. The
fact that she enjoyed cigarettes was simply a small bonus.

Number fifty-eight was a shipyard worker at Ingalls in
Pascagoula--fifty years old, white male, divorced, a union
officer. Carl flashed a photo of the man's Ford pickup on the wall,
and was about to summarize his life when the door opened and
Mr. Rankin Fitch stepped into the room. Carl stopped. The
lawyers bolted upright in their seats and instantly became
enthralled by the Ford. They wrote furiously on their legal pads as
if they might
never again see such a vehicle. The jury consultants likewise
snapped into action and all began taking notes in earnest, each
careful not to look at the man.

Fitch was back. Fitch was in the room.

He slowly closed the door behind him, took a few steps toward
the edge of the table, and glared at everyone sitting around it. It
was more of a snarl than a glare. The puffy flesh around his dark
eyes pinched inward. The deep wrinkles running the length of his
forehead closed together. His thick chest rose and sank slowly,
and for a second or two Fitch was the only person breathing. His
lips parted to eat and drink, occasionally to talk, never to smile.

Fitch was angry, as usual, nothing new about that because the
man even slept in a state of hostility. But would he curse and
threaten, maybe throw things, or simply boil under the surface?
They never knew with Fitch. He stopped at the edge of the table
between two young lawyers who were junior partners and thus
earning comfortable six-figure salaries, who were members of this
firm and this was their room in their building. Fitch, on the other
hand, was a stranger from Washington, an intruder who'd been
growling and barking in their hallways for a month now. The two
young lawyers dared not look at him.

"What number?" Fitch asked of Carl.

"Fifty-eight," Carl answered quickly, anxious to please.

"Go back to fifty-six," Fitch demanded, and Carl flicked rapidly
until the face of Nicholas Easter was once again on the wall.
Paperwork ruffled around the table.

"What do you know?" Fitch asked.

"The same," Carl said, looking away.

"That's just great. Out of a hundred and ninety-six, how many
are still mysteries?"

"Eight."

Fitch snorted and shook his head slowly, and everyone waited
for an eruption. Instead, he slowly stroked his meticulously
trimmed black and gray goatee for a few seconds, looked at Carl,
allowed the severity of the moment to filter in, then said, "You'll
work until midnight, then return at seven in the morning. Same
for Sunday." With that, he wheeled his pudgy body around and left
the room.

The door slammed. The air lightened considerably, then, in
unison, the lawyers and the jury consultants and Carl and everybody
else glanced at their watches. They had just been ordered to
spend thirty-nine out of the next fifty-three hours in this room,
looking at enlarged photos of faces they'd already seen,
memorizing names and birthdates and vital stats of almost two
hundred people.

And there wasn't the slightest doubt anywhere in the room that
they all would do exactly what they'd been told. Not the slightest.

Fitch took the stairs to the first floor of the building, and
was met there by his driver, a large man named Jose. Jose wore a
black suit with black western boots and black sunglasses that
were removed only when he showered and slept. Fitch opened a
door without knocking, and interrupted a meeting which had been
in progress for hours. Four lawyers and their assorted support
staff were watching the videotaped depositions of the plaintiff's
first witnesses. The tape stopped just seconds after Fitch burst in.
He spoke briefly to one of the lawyers, then left the room. Jose
followed him through a narrow library to another hallway, where
he barged through another door and frightened another bunch of
lawyers.

With eighty lawyers, the firm of Whitney & Cable & White
was the largest on the Gulf Coast. The firm had been handpicked
by Fitch himself, and it would earn millions in fees because of this
selection. To earn the money, though, the firm had to endure the
tyranny and ruthlessness of Rankin Fitch.

When satisfied that the entire building was aware of his
presence and terrified of his movements, Fitch left. He stood on
the sidewalk, in the warm October air, and waited for Jose. Three
blocks away, in the top half of an old bank building, he could see
an office suite filled with lights. The enemy was still working. The
plaintiff's lawyers were up there, all huddled together in various
rooms, meeting with experts and looking at grainy photos and
doing pretty much the same things his people were doing. The trial
started Monday with jury selection, and he knew they too were
sweating over names and faces and wondering who the hell was
Nicholas Easter and where did he come from. And Ramon Caro
and Lucas Miller and Andrew Lamb and Barbara Furrow and
Delores DeBoe? Who were these people? Only in a backwater
place like Mississippi would you find such outdated lists of
prospective jurors. Fitch had directed the defense in eight cases before
this one, in eight different states where computers were used and
rolls were purged and where, when the clerks handed you your
list of jurors, you didn't have to worry about who was dead and
who wasn't.

He stared blankly at the distant lights and wondered how the
greedy sharks would split the money, if they happened to win.
How in the world could they ever agree to divide the bloody
carcass? The trial would be a gentle skirmish compared to the
throat-cutting that would ensue if they got their verdict, and their
spoils.

He hated them, and he spat on the sidewalk. He lit a cigarette,
squeezing it tightly between his thick fingers.

Jose pulled to the curb in a shiny, rented Suburban with dark
windows. Fitch took his customary place in the front seat. Jose
too looked up at the enemy lawyers' office as they drove past, but
he said nothing because his boss did not suffer small talk. They
drove past the Biloxi courthouse, and past a semi-abandoned dime
store where Fitch and associates maintained a hidden suite of
offices with fresh plywood dust on the floor and cheap rented
furniture.

They turned west on Highway 90 at the beach and limped
through heavy traffic. It was Friday night, and the casinos were
packed with people gambling away grocery money with big plans
to win it back tomorrow. They slowly made it out of Biloxi,
through Gulfport, Long Beach, and Pass Christian. Then they left
the coastline, and were soon passing through a security
checkpoint near a lagoon.